


We Plant Bones

by bookwyrmling



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: A lot of people make a lot of mistakes, Anxiety, BPD Kent, Drug Abuse, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mental Illness, Misunderstandings of Mental Illness, Not a Happy Story, The Overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 12:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10662210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: Jack’s bathroom door is closed and the light is peeking out from underneath, but when Kent knocks, no one answers.  He can’t hear the shower running, but he thinks the sink is so he tries calling out for Jack but there’s still no answer.  When he twists the handle, he finds the door is unlocked and, wondering if Jack just plain forgot to turn the light off, he opens the door to find Jack on the ground with his pill bottle and a handful of pills spilled around him.Shit.





	We Plant Bones

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone has their own version of The Overdose, right? I actually wrote this, like, 7 months ago when I first found out the 2009 Draft was held in Montreal and it's just been sitting, complete, in my folders for that long as I tried to decide whether or not to post it.
> 
> There are definite trigger warnings in this fic. Neither Jack nor Kent are mentally stable and neither of them have healthy coping mechanisms. Kent, who is the main POV in the fic, specifically has little understanding of mental illness, including Jack's-not to mention being oblivious to his own-and makes poorly informed statements about Jack's mental health. Kent also splits on Jack. As much as I have been back and forth on posting this, I feel today is a good time to post it as we remember the importance of complete mental illness representation in media. If you are not comfortable with reading this, therefore, please do not. Keep yourselves healthy, first and foremost.
> 
> Also, it would probably help if I knew ANYTHING about hockey or how the Draft works, so if any of those mechanics are off, well...*hand waves in hockey's general direction* shhhhhhhh

**The Overdose**

Jack and Kent are staying with Jack’s parents for the duration of the draft.  They had been there pretty much ever since winning the Memorial Cup since Jack was kinda really letting his nerves get to him and it seemed like the best idea to let him stay at home.  Familiar faces and places and all that shit.  Kent sort of understood it, but he just liked that it gave him and Jack the entire summer together, when he normally went back home to stay with his family.  For the most part, he didn’t even mind the emotional hand-holding Jack seemed to require so long as the physical hand(and more)-holding that had started the night of their Memorial Cup win continued.

The night before the draft finds the two playing video games after the elder Zimmermanns have gone to bed.  Jack and Kent are drunk on a fifth of vodka they had pulled out after the celebratory wine the Zimmermanns had opened with dinner hadn’t given either quite enough of the buzz they were searching for to drown out the tension of what is coming in the morning.  Kent is getting kinda worked up because he’s nervous about the draft, too, but Jack keeps freaking out about not going first and Kent loves Jack, he really does, but he’s feeling the pressure tonight, too.  Why can’t he want, even just a bit, even just tonight, to go first?  Why does he have to keep telling Jack it’s okay, of course they’ll pick him when it hurts to say it?  Why would it be so bad if Kent went first and Jack went second?  They’re both the best and Kent would do better in Vegas anyway.  So he kind of just tells Jack he’s “done talking about the draft, so let’s just play some more Call of Duty.”

After all, it’s not like Kent would actually go first when Jack’s there.

Jack hits a point where he can’t really focus on the game and Kent realizes he’s getting worked up again but Kent just can’t deal right now, so when Jack steps out of the room, Kent switches the game out for Arkham Asylum.

It’s a while before he realizes Jack hasn’t come back.  At first he tells himself Jack probably just went to bed, but Kent knows Jack can’t fall asleep when he’s this worked up—not without working or talking it out (or a handful of pills and a few more drinks but they don’t have any more liquor unless they break into his parents’ stash and Jack’s been having more pills than usual lately anyway, so Kent’s been trying to get him to cut back to begin with)—and Kent figures he can do this one more time tonight before they hit the hay so Kent goes to search for him.  He might be able to help distract him a bit better than a video game could, too.

Jack’s bathroom door is closed and the light is peeking out from underneath, but when Kent knocks, no one answers.  He can’t hear the shower running, but he thinks the sink is so he tries calling out for Jack but there’s still no answer.  When he twists the handle, he finds the door is unlocked and, wondering if Jack just plain forgot to turn the light off, he opens the door to find Jack on the ground with his pill bottle and a handful of pills spilled around him.

_ Shit. _

He tries shaking Jack and shouting at him, but Jack won’t wake up.

_ Shitshitshit. _

A door opens down the hall and Kent can hear footsteps rushing his way but he just keeps trying to shake Jack awake.  There’s cursing in French and a gasp of fear and Kent is torn away from Jack as Bad Bob takes his place, checking for vitals and trying to wake his son, and, in Alicia’s death grip, Kent sobs because _ oh God, what if he’s dead???? _

Alicia is the one who calls emergency services.  Bob does chest compressions until they arrive.  Kent kneels in the hallway, watching and begging for Jack’s chest to rise on its own, for his fingers to twitch, for his eyes to open, for a, “Hey, Kenny,” or anything, dammit, Kent will spend the rest of the night telling Jack of course he’s going first in the draft if Jack would  _ please just wake up, Jack, dammit, wake up! _

Bob rides in the ambulance with Jack.  Alicia and Kent take a cab and Alicia spends the entire time making phone calls in English and French and breaking down into tears in between.

Kent kinda feels like he’s been checked really hard and all he can do is watch everything that’s happening without an ability to react to it.  It feels like he’s on the outside—some passerby on the street who sees a cab pass by with his own face staring back out at him—like he’s not a part of this emergency; like everything is all so far away.  It’s just him, in a vacuum or underwater or in outer space or something else stupid and cliche but not at all off the mark, watching the world end.  He can’t cry even though he feels the dampness in the corners of his eyes and the ball of pressure and fear in his chest.  When Alicia asks him if he’s alright, all he can do is give a small nod as he continues to stare out the window, searching for his body on the sidewalk.  He can’t look her in the eye and then she’s making another phone call, anyway, so Kent figures she was probably asking out of compulsion; maybe to calm herself down.

They spend the whole night in the waiting room.  Both Bob and Alicia offer to drive him home to sleep, but the thought of being at their place all alone when Jack is here maybe dying or maybe dead because he took too many fucking pills back at that place Kent’s still supposed to be able to sleep at makes him want to throw up.  He shakes his head no, walks down the hallway to find a trash can out of sight and does just that.

The tears start to threaten then, but it’s too late.  It’s too late to be crying over what happened now of all times and it’s too early to cry for news they haven’t heard yet.  So he chokes the tears and sobs and burning down, blows his nose, finds some water and walks back to the waiting room.  Bob and Alicia are both looking at him with worry and Kent kinda wants to go throw up again because they don’t know he could’ve stopped this.  They don’t know he could have spent more time reassuring Jack.  They don’t know that while their son was in the bathroom, dying, Kent was having his ass handed to him by Bane because he was too drunk to use the controller as well as he usually would.

They ask him if he’s okay and all Kent can think is of course he is.  He’s not the one having his stomach pumped right now.  He shakes his head yes.  They ask if he wants to call his mom and that actually sounds pretty good because she’s in town at a hotel (the Zimmermanns had offered her a room, but she’d turned them down because she hadn’t had a vacation in years and there was a place with a spa she could take advantage of) for the draft tomorrow and she gives really good fucking hugs and Kent can use one or ten of those right now, okay?  But he can’t talk and he doesn’t even have his goddamned phone so he shakes his head no and Alicia puts a hand on his cheek and asks if he wants her to call his mom and, yeah, okay, that sounds good.  He nods his head once more for that and Alicia gives him a watery half-smile and steps aside to make the call.  Kent collapses into a chair and Bad Bob puts his hand on his shoulder next to tell him, “It’s going to be okay, son,” and Kent wants to ask him how he knows.  Kent wants to ask him what if it isn’t.  Kent wants to tell him it’s his fault.  Kent swallows and nods and is so fucking glad when Bob pats his shoulder once and then moves over to Alicia so Kent can bury his head in his hands and shove the tears down once more.  He kinda misses being trapped in the cliche water-space-vacuum.

His mom arrives in a panic and holds him and Kent holds her back because he can’t hold the tears anymore—never could when it came to his mom—and he cries until he can’t breathe and then he cries some more.

The doctors come in and tell the Zimmermanns that their son is stabilized, but the next few hours might be touch and go.  Unless something happens, though, there won’t be any news for a while and they’re welcome to go in and see him.

Bob and Alicia do that with promises to be back out soon.  Kent’s mom spends the time helping Kent put himself back together and telling him they’re going back to her hotel so he can get some sleep.  Kent knows he won’t sleep, but his mother is in her I Mean Business mode and Kent’s learned from experience that you don’t say no to a mother when she’s in that mode.

She does stick around for the Zimmermanns to come back out.  To say goodbye, she tells Kent, but when Alicia and Bob ask if Kent would like to go in and see Jack—“He’s asleep, but the doctors said it’d be fine”—he sees her smile at him and knows this was why.  Kent can hear the prompting in the offer and see it in the way they look at him, but Kent feels like his chest is being crushed at the mere thought of walking into that room and he shakes his head and his eyes drop to his feet.  He’s a coward.  He’s weak.  It’s all his fucking fault.  He can’t do it.

His mom pulls him into a hug and rubs his back and shushes him like she’s always done whenever he’s cried as far back as Kent can remember before telling the Zimmermanns she is taking him back to the hotel to sleep, but is there anything else she can do for them?  They say no, they already have family on the way, but they’ll call if there’s news and Kent follows her out to a cab she had called for and leans against her the whole way back to the hotel while she runs her fingers through his hair.

There’s only one bed, but neither cares and Kent kicks his shoes off before his mom tucks him in on one side, still fully dressed, and slips in on the other, reaching out to rub his back and shush him to sleep.

She falls asleep first and, rather than wake her when the shuddering sobs start back up in his throat and chest, he locks himself in the bathroom for the next half hour and turns on the shower.  He cries on the floor and apologizes to Jack and Bob and Alicia.  He apologizes to his mom and he begs Jack to wake up and promises Jack and God both anything and everything if he does.

Kent hears his mom knocking on the door, but his arms and legs don’t really want to work and he kind of deserves to suffer, anyway, so he ignores it and curls in on himself until his mother is banging on the door shouting and pleading with him to open up as if  _ he’s _ the one shoving pills down his throat one after the other and—OH.

Kent aches and shakes as he forces himself out of the fetal position but manages to unlock the door and, whether he deserves the comfort or not, having his mom here holding him helps him feel a hell of a lot better.

**The Draft**

They have room service breakfast a couple hours later, after a call from Bob makes it clear everything has already slipped to the media and Kent hides in the room while his mom goes to the Zimmermanns’ to pick up his things—Alicia and Bob are still at the hospital with some more family for support, but Bob’s sister and Alicia’s aunt and a handful of others are at the house running the phone tree and cooking and watching kids and Alicia calls ahead so everything is ready and waiting to be picked up.

Kent spends a half-hour standing under cold water trying to get the puffiness and redness of his eyes to die down.  He doesn’t even want to go to the draft now.  How can he sit through that when he doesn’t even know if Jack’s awake?  When Jack was supposed to be there with him?  When Jack was supposed to go first?  But his mother makes it clear he’s going and, once he’s in his suit, Bad Bob calls and talks to him.  He tells him he’s going to be watching and rooting for him and that he’ll send a text if anything changes with Jack, but he’s stable, he promises, and will be just fine.  “The press might ask about this and what you say is up to you, son, but if you don’t want to talk about it you don’t have to.  Alicia and I have our people on this.  You just focus on you and the draft; I’m sure that Jack would say the same.”

Kent knows that’s a fucking lie because all Jack’s been worried about since they won the Memorial Cup is himself and the draft, not Kenny, so why would he give a fuck now?  But he doesn’t say as much, not to Bad Bob.  He just says, “Okay,” and hangs up the phone when the disconnected signal starts beeping.

Kent is swarmed by reporters before he even makes it inside the Bell Centre and all he hears is question after question about Jack and what happened and he can’t deal with this.  Bob told him to say what he wanted, so he stops, sick to his stomach, just long enough to say, “I wasn’t there.  I don’t know.”  And then he shoulders himself and his mother past security and through the doors.  He hopes it’s enough to give him some space to breathe.

He’s pissed at the media for making a circus out of his best friend almost dying.  He’s pissed at himself for lying.  He’s pissed at Jack for making him lie because he almost died.  He’s pissed at the NHL draft for happening and making him be here instead of at the hospital.  He’s even more pissed at himself for finding he’d rather be here than at Jack’s side—though hiding back in his mom’s hotel bathroom sounds like the best of the three places right now.

He spends fifteen minutes practicing his smile in a mirror in one of the bathrooms, scaring the shit out of some other guys when they come in to take a piss only to see Kent just standing at the sink, grinning like some sort of psycho.  It doesn’t reach his swollen eyes, but who the fuck’s gonna be able to tell that much when he’s standing up on the stage?

Kent Parson goes first in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft.  Without Jack around, it’s not a surprise to anyone.  He still smiles for the Aces and smiles for the cameras and answers questions about his upcoming NHL career and, when he’s asked about Jack, he says, “I wasn’t there.  I don’t know,” and then redirects talk back to the draft.  When they ask if he’s worried about Jack, he says, “His family’s with him; I’m sure he’ll be fine,” and redirects talk back to the draft.  When they bring up the rumors of a coke overdose, Kent’s face hardens and the interview is done.

He can feel his phone buzz in his pocket, but Kent finds he really doesn’t want to look at what it says.

So after the draft, Kent goes back to his mom’s hotel room and passes the fuck out.  He doesn’t check his phone until the next day.

**The Aftermath**

Jack is awake.  Kent manages to pull that news out from the congratulations that fill his facebook notifications, chat notifications and texts.  He sends a text back to Alicia asking how he’s doing and Bob calls him not even a minute later.

“He’s been pretty quiet.  Would you want to stop by?  We think seeing his best friend would do him good.”

Kent feels his stomach turn, but he needs to see Jack to know he’ll be okay and it’s for Jack’s own good.  His dad says so.  So Kent grabs a cab to the hospital.  Thank God media isn’t allowed on the premises because Kent is so wound up that he’d probably punch anyone who asked him any more goddamned questions about Jack or about how he feels.

Alicia and Bob are in the middle of a group of people when Kent enters the waiting room, but the moment they spot him they make their way over and that twisty feeling in Kent’s stomach only gets worse as they hug him tight.

“Congrats, son,” Bob tells him with a tired smile as he pulls away, “Vegas is lucky to have you and Alicia and I are so proud.”

Kent isn’t quite sure how to verbalize the belief he’d talked himself into since the start of summer that they wanted Jack, not him, and he was certain, either way, the situation made such a comment inappropriate, so he puts on the same grin he’d been practicing in the mirror yesterday, claps Bob’s arm in gratitude and says, “Vegas won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Alicia’s and Bob’s smiles don’t look quite right, but everything has been tilted fifteen degrees off ever since Jack swallowed all those pills, so Kent swallows the thought and smiles a not quite right smile back.

“We were just thinking of stopping in at the cafeteria for a meal,” Alicia says as she gestures to the group of people they had been standing with.  Family, Kent realizes, and he nods his head, not quite up for food himself.  “Jack’s in the same room, 901, if you want to pop in and say hi, though,” she adds and Kent sighs in relief at not having to spend time around all these people he doesn’t know or has only met once or twice before.  Alicia smiles and Bob chuckles and pats him on the back before leaving him behind in the waiting room.

Kent knows he has limited time before everyone comes back and he, as the friend, would have to step aside for family, but even so he finds himself standing in the waiting room ten minutes after everyone has filed out.  Nurses in their colorful scrubs and doctors in their white coats bustle around with stethoscopes wrapped around their necks and charts in their hands.  Small groups of four or five visitors or patients with support spread themselves out equidistant amongst the chairs and floorspace, eyes tired of crying or just plain tired, staring down at cups of steaming coffee or phone screens.

Kent watches it all happening around him: good news and bad news and life and death. His eyes slip down the hall as he dares himself to take the first step, the second, the third.

The courage from each met dare flees when his hand falls on the doorknob for 901.

The door is not shut, not completely. Instead, the latchbolt knocks against the doorjamb, holding the door open just enough to swing inward if Kent were to give a moderate push.  His fingers brush against the printed wood grain without any strength.

Inside, Kent can hear a television drone, the sound of unfamiliar voices speaking in the far too familiar tone of practiced announcement slipping through the cracks around the door, just loud enough to hear through the intermittent din of hospital noises.  It reminds Kent of two nights ago and shivering in a chair down the hall and his stomach turns.  He remembers Jack’s white face and chest compressions and Alicia sobbing in between phone calls.  He remembers Jack’s shaking hands and has to grasp his own to still them and steel himself before shouldering in.

For all of the two seconds it takes to step inside, Kent is terrified he’ll walk in to see Jack passed out on the floor again or covered in tubes and wires.  Instead, he walks in to find the same face he always knew, the normal color it was supposed to be sitting up in bed and staring his way in shock.  “Zimms!” Kent chokes out and only just manages to keep himself from sagging to the hospital floor by gripping into the doorknob and shutting the door behind him.

“Ken-t…” Jack stumbles over his words for a moment before his face slams shut and his eyes return to the television.  Kent follows them to find Draft coverage.  He watches himself stand on stage between the Aces GM and an NHL rep while wearing his brand new jersey.  The Kent on the television smirks at the flash of cameras and waves and if the Kent in Jack’s hospital room did not know better, he never would have known how much he had cried the night before.

“I missed you,” he whispers into the room, his eyes drifting back to Jack.  He swallows, to hold back the tears as he remembers how fucking scared he had been the whole day and said, “I missed you so fucking much up on that stage, Zimms.”

Honestly speaking, Jack does not look all that great, but, if Kent is being honest here, Jack hasn’t been looking all that great for the past few months.  Nearly dying and having your stomach pumped seemed like more than reason enough to look like shit, anyway.  Better than being nervous, anyway.  Who hadn’t been nervous for the draft?  Who hadn’t been scared?  Not Kent, and he still managed to make it.  The curl of anger in Kent’s gut heats up again and he clenches his fist and frowns as Jack stares at him impassively before turning up the volume on the television and asking, “Don’t you have a flight to get ready for?”

Kent can recognize a dismissal when he hears one—had been hearing them his whole life thanks to his size or his background—and his fists clench and hackles rise.

“Visiting my best friend after he nearly killed himself seemed a bit higher of a priority,” he bites back through ground teeth.  He feels both vindicated and nauseous at the way Jack flinches.

It’s an unwanted victory short-lived, however, when Jack sneers, “I have my family; I’m sure I’ll be fine.”  And Kent knows exactly what had put Jack in his bad mood.

“What the fuck was I supposed to tell them?” he asks in disbelief, “They were fucking asking if I was doing lines of coke with you!  My mom was there!”  There’s a pressure in Kent’s chest that has been building up since before the Draft, before Jack on the bathroom floor, possibly even before the Memorial Cup and it’s too big now.  He can’t breathe around it anymore.  “What?” he snaps, “Did you want me to say it wasn’t coke; you were just too much of a pussy to handle the stress?”  On some level, Kent knows this is bad.  It always is when they fight about Jack’s pills or Kent’s risky kisses or hockey.  There is a voice in Kent’s mind that’s screaming at him to shut the fuck up.  To turn around and leave and try this again tomorrow.  But like a snapped rubber band the words just keep pouring out of his mouth as he watches Jack’s face go pale.  “Did you want me to tell them that when your hands were shaking too much to open your goddamn pills, you’d shove the bottle at me?  That I knew you were taking more than you should, but kept it a secret because you begged me not to tell when you couldn’t even fucking breathe?  You were supposed to just need it until the draft, Zimms.  Not fucking try and kill yourself the night before!”  Kent cries.  He’s so angry, so pissed off at himself, at his best friend, at everything, that he can’t stop the tears and the sobs and the snot he can feel trickling down the inside of his nose.

“Get.  Out.”

Jack isn’t crying.  Jack is staring at the blankets he has clenched his fists into and his face is completely pale and completely blank.  Jack’s breaths are broken—Kent can hear them and see each shuddered rise of his chest—but so are Kent’s.  Jack’s hands are shaking and Kent’s are jammed into his pockets so they will stop.

“No, Zimms,” Kent fights as he tears one hand out of his pockets to scrub the sleeve of his shirt across his nose and eyes, “you don’t get to pull this shit!  I was the one who fucking found you in that goddamned bathroom!  I thought you were dead!”  It’s the first time Kent’s admitted that out loud and it hits him like a punch to the gut, stealing his breath until he calms himself down enough to remind himself that Jack is here, Jack is alive.  They’re fighting, yes, but, God, he’ll take anything at this point because Jack is fucking alive.

Jack just doesn’t seem to care and he shouts just as loud as Kent and at the same time and Kent wonders if Jack is hearing even a word he says.  Kent hears every single one of Jack’s words like a knife: “Get the fuck out, Kenny!  I’m done hearing this!  You don’t get to talk to me like this!”

No.  No.  Jack did not get to talk to him like this!  Jack was hurting, sure, but that doesn’t mean Kent isn’t hurting, too.  That doesn’t mean that Kent hasn’t been through hell and back the past three days, either.  That doesn’t mean Kent has to stay silent anymore about everything he was going through.  “I spent the whole fucking night sitting out in that emergency waiting room while they pumped your stomach and tried to save your goddamn life!” he shouts, “What the fuck?!”

“Oh, so it’s suddenly about you?” Jack snipes, “Well, use it.  I’m sure the paps would love to run that story.  Turn yourself into the fucking hero, eh?  Saved the fuck-up’s life  _ and _ went first in the draft.”

“Jack!” Kent can hear Alicia gasp as Bob shoulders his way into the room and past Kent.

“That’s enough, boys.”

Kent laughs.  He has to.  Because that has to be a joke, right?  They are best friends.  They are  _ in love _ .  Four nights ago, they had been wrapped up in each other, shushing whenever the other got too loud.  How could Jack ever think Kent would do anything like that?  Kent knows exactly how Jack feels about media.  He knows Jack doesn’t trust a lot of people.  Kent had always thought that Jack trusted him, though.  It hurts and the only way he can see to numb it is to make Jack feel the same way.  “No, Zimms.  It’s about you.  It’s always about you,” he growls, ignoring Bob’s sharp glare.

“I’ve spent the whole goddamn summer helping you,” he reminds Jack, ignoring Bob’s rebuking call of his name and the hands on his shoulders that begin shoving him towards the door, as the tears start again and each verbal blow is made specifically to hurt himself enough to ignore the pain Jack has caused, to hide from himself the pain he’s causing Jack, “telling you you were better and you’d go first and you haven’t given one thought to me since fucking postseason.  Trust me, Zimms, it’s fucking all about you.”  He can’t even yell anymore.  He just wants to stop hurting.  He wants Zimms back.  He wants four nights ago back.  Even if it wasn’t perfect, he could pretend it was.  It was so much better than this, so much better than holding onto a door jamb, trying to fight to keep the best thing in his life.

“Kent, not now,” Bob argues as he finally tears Kent into the hall and shuts the door with Alicia trying to calm her son down.

Kent doesn’t miss Jack’s parting words, though.  “Get the fuck out, Parson!” tears his heart out of his chest.  Kent’s pretty certain he sees it hit the floor inside the room right before the door closes.  He can’t get it back now.

The moment Kent’s back touches the wall, his legs fall out from under him and he collapses to the ground, hiding his face and trying to stifle his sobs.  Bob crouches down in front of him and rests a light hand on his hunched back.  “It hurts, I know,” Bob says with his own catch in his throat and has to stop to clear it, “but we can’t corner him right now. The doctors-”  Bob takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling before continuing, “The doctors say he’s physically fine—or will be once his body recovers from the ordeal.  But they’re recommending rehab and therapy.  Alicia and I have been looking for something that will get him out of the public eye for a while, too.  When we tried to talk with him about it, Jack wasn’t responding and we thought his friend could help.  I’m sorry we put that on you, Kent.  Alicia and I are both so sorry.”

And, the thing is, Kent knows this is hard for Bob.  Kent is scared and hurt and mad and he’s not even Jack’s dad.  Kent knows Bob means it when he apologizes, too.  But Kent doesn’t need an apology from Bob.  Kent knows Bob and Alicia are trying.  Kent just wants Jack.  So he nods at what Bob is saying, but he can’t look him in the eye and his shoulder keeps trying to sink away from Bob’s touch.

“Jack just needs time to focus on himself and heal,” Bob says and Kent gives a mucosal snort because what the fuck else has Jack been doing this summer?  And what?  Just because Kent can manage to not kill himself, he has to step back and continue to hurt?

“I’m sure things will change with time, Kent.  But for now, it’s probably best to go back to the hotel.  Do you want me or Alicia to drive you?”

This time, with a bitter taste in his mouth and regret and anger churning in his gut, Kent takes the dismissal for what it is.  “I’ll be fine,” he shrugs Bob’s hand off his shoulder and stands up.  The moment Bob is standing, as well, Kent pushes away from the wall and begins to walk towards the hospital’s entrance, his feet unsteady beneath him like he’s had too much to drink and he feels so fucking tired and done.

“We’ll keep you updated, Kent,” Bob calls out and Kent wants to tell him no.  It’s a visceral, body-rending sensation to give the whole situation the middle finger but the thought of not knowing how Jack is doing leaves him feeling empty and even more worthless than he already does.  Instead, Kent tugs the brim of his cap low over his eyes to hide the tears and raises his other hand in a wave of acceptance.

Kent’s waited this long for Jack to love him with a matched ferocity.  He’ll just have to wait a bit longer.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank Alex for beta-ing and cheerreading and a close friend, Gabi, for pressing me to post this and my Tumblr followers for dealing with me grumbling about titles.
> 
> Speaking of titles, title taken from Catherine Feeny's Unsteady Ground because I've been pulling my hair out over finding one for two hours and this sounds like it'll work.
> 
> Catch me on Tumblr at rushingsnowy to talk about CP, Kent Parson and how much thinking up titles sucks!


End file.
